About future and politics

Mission

Future and politics is a multilingual forum for communicating and discussing future-oriented research with an interest in international politics and global issues.

It aims to:

Communicate research – future and politics aims to raise the visibility of research in the area of foresight and future analysis interested in questions of international politics and global issues;

Foster dialogue – future and politics encourages an open and productive dialogue on foresight projects and future analytical research. It is interested in substantive issues, methods, as well as in the theories that underlie such research;

Building a community – future and politics aims to contribute to raising the consciousness and visibility of a community of academics, policy-analysts and decision-makers that are interested in foresight and future analytical perspectives in the area of international politics and global issues.

Structure

Future and politics works towards these aims by presenting concrete research projects in the area of foresight and future analysis.

Projects is thus its major category, assembling concrete research endeavors that use future and politics to communicate the process and the results of their research.

Contributions of such projects as well as independent contributions can fall into one of three categories:

Issues assembles analyses of international politics and global issues. It contains original analyses, the presentation of empirical work published in other contexts as well as the critical discussion of work by other authors;

Institutions & Community allows projects and institutions to introduce themselves to the readers of future and politics. It also contains discussion about and analysis of the development of the foresight and future analysis community in general.

Authorship

Contribute to future and politics – future and politics is designed as a forum for communicating and debating foresight and future analytical research. It can thus thrive only on your engagement.

If you are interested in contributing to future and politics feel free to write an e-mail to

joern.richert(at)future-and-politics.org.

Initiation and organization – My name is Jörn Richert. I have initiated this blog because I believe that we need more explicit thinking and debate about the future and the methodological as well as theoretical challenges that analyzing the future entails. This is particularly true when it comes to international politics and global issues. In an increasingly contingent world, it is of utmost importance to acknowledge contingency itself and to develop new forms of handling it. Foresight and future analysis can help us doing so.

I am a Mercator-IPC Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center (IPC) at Sabanci University in Istanbul, where I conduct a foresight project on EU-Turkish energy relations. Previously I worked in the area of foresight and future analysis at the Future Analysis Branch of the German Armed Force’s Planning Office from 2011 to 2013 and as an Associate of the stiftung neue verantwortung (SNV) from 2012 to 2013. Besides foresight methods, my main topics were energy and climate politics and security as well as and the global economy.

The future of international politics and global issues has been an important part of my professional life. After studying Political Science, Economics and Psychology in Kiel and Madrid, I worked at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP) in Berlin from 2007 to 2011. In research projects on ‘Climate Change and Security’ and ‘Competing for Scarce Resources’ the need for thinking harder about how to analyze developments that have no yet happened became quickly apparent.

Finally, through writing my PhD at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS) as well as at the Center for Advanced Security Theory (CAST), Copenhagen University, I not only gained insights into the history and present of global oil politics. I also had the opportunity to elaborate on the question of how today’s theories determine our expectations about the future.